Mindy Lu's blog

Last week, my essay focus on the friendship between Natalie and Leah. This week, I will sharpen my lens to focus on specific part of the book to analyze the complex friendship. But I have not decided which part to choose. Probably, I will choose to focus on ENVY, combine it with my personal expereience and go on exlore the nature friendship between women.

Last week, my essay focus on the friendship between Natalie and Leah. This week, I will sharpen my lens to focus on specific part of the book to analyze the complex friendship. But I have not decided which part to choose. Probably, I will choose to focus on ENVY, combine it with my personal expereience and go on exlore the nature friendship between women.

Friendship between Leah and Natalie

  Relationships make a novel. Every single piece of stories is connected and combined by relationships of various sorts. Complex relationships among characters make plots splendid. In the novel NW by Zadie Smith, there are lots of relationships not only among characters but also among the backgrounds, the city, the stories and the fates, which makes the novel absorbing and interesting.  

When I read this book, I am really interested in the relationships of various sorts throughout the book. The friendship between Lean and Natalie\Keisha is complex, because of the great difference between their worldviews. The connection among the four characters is also subtle and valueable to be analyzed, because although their experience seems to be apart, they do interact each other. Moreover, the relationships I mention are not only  among people, but also between the city and the stories,the minds and realities.

Learning as a City Player

Yijing Lu

  When I saw the mosaic decoration on the wall of The International Airport of San Francisco, the sentence that“Mosaics celebrated seasonal change and embellished the shrines of the gods of fertility, harvest, and renewal with sensual displays of body and earth” came into my brain; when I saw the fantastic paintings in the libraries of UC Berkeley, I thought of the definition of “critical play”; when I wandered near the Golden Gate Bridge, I felt that I was a “city player”; and, when I experienced all the moments above, I realized that the course “Play in the City” impacted me a lot.

  I still remember that when I first enrolled into this course, I was so curious about how to play in the city and what we can learn from it. Now, at the middle of semester, I have found the answer.

  During the first week we talk about what the city is, and we share our favorite cities and our experience in them. I remember that three of my classmates chose San Francisco as the city they loved most, which not only surprised me, but also becomes one of the reasons why I made a trip there during this fall break.

My Critical Play

In Critical Play, Flanagan made the definition that “Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life.” Before I read this text this semester, I had never heard about critical play at all. Thus, with strong curiosity, I decided to design an activity which can be considered as a kind of critical play. This Saturday, I went to Chinatown to combine play and research with the question about human life—Why people choose Philadelphia to live in?

I will not ask natives this question, because the reason why they live in Philadelphia may be that they are born in the city, or there house located in the city. I want to ask settlers, which specialties of Philadelphia absorb them to let them stay here-- far away from their hometown. Thus, as a player, my goal is to find out the answer during my trip to Chinatown. I rambled along streets and visited stores there. I talked to different people with different jobs and did some interview to collect information.

1. http://www.philly.com
2. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g60795-Philadelphia_Pennsylvania-Vacations.html
3. http://wikitravel.org/en/Philadelphia
4. https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&q=Philadelphia+weather&revid=1305973735
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia
6. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/22550

（I can get there by Septa, Market East Station）

What is Play?

Yijing Lu

When I am reading that part of the definition of “play” in Critical Play by Mary Flanagan, many experience and ideas of my trips to Philadelphia jump into my brain. I never tried to make any relationship between my experience of play and theories from books before. However, I have to admit that it is exciting and meaningful to combine some definitions and actions to achieve something new of feedback.

  “Play is a notoriously difficult concept to define; it is a culturally and socially specific idea.”

  I agree with this opinion. “Play” is an abstract word that can be considered as games of various sorts, or can be treated as kinds of actions for fun. In this sentence above, the author mentions “culturally” and “socially”, and I want to add one more word “personally”, because in my opinion, “play” can be defined by every individuals. For example, playing piano can be a kind of “play” for people who are good at or enjoy it, but it also can be a kind of torment for a poor girl who is compelled to learn piano by her strict mother. In other words, if you like, everything can be a kind of playing --working can be a kind of playing, because you may get a sense of achievement; studying can be a kind of playing, because you may enrich your knowledge; reading can be a kind of playing, because you may widen your horizon; and, even sleeping can be a kind of playing, because you may have an amazing dream!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Braque

Braque believed that an artist experienced beauty "… in terms of volume, of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty [he] interpret[s] [his] subjective impression...”He described "objects shattered into fragments… [as] a way of getting closest to the object…Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space”.He adopted a monochromatic and neutral color palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.

I use several photos of this trip, some key words, and some part of my wall pappers of my phone to create this mosaic. The combination of those element can express my mood and feeling during the trip.